Perplexity
by Midnyght Saber
Summary: She's discovered the truth, knows what Vlad did to create her, and the knowledge of her parents and what her creator truly saw of her, she's broken and seeking some way to escape the confusion and pain taking over her mind.


**Disclaimer: **_Danny Phantom_ and all related characters and information are the property of Butch Hartman and Viacom International, Inc. "The Drapery Falls" is the property of Opeth and was released by Music for Nations, whose catalog was taken up by parent company Zomba Record Group.

* * *

I shouldn't exist.

I shouldn't be alive.

I don't belong in this world.

**Please remedy my confusion**

**And thrust me back to the day**

I'm an affront to nature. Not only was I born of cloning technology, I am a victim of a loveless birth, something designed not as a life form, not as a daughter, but as a machination of one's twisted idea of righteousness and vengeance.

**The silence of your seclusion**

**Brings night into all you say**

If the rising tides of self-loathing aren't enough to make me wonder why I'm still struggling to survive, the dreams are. The horrid nightmares, of writhing shadows and of flames, of creatures no madman could ever create, of things that no language can truly describe – they are the plague that keep me from a good night's rest. I don't know if it's a curse because of my nature or if it is simply all the worry and fear of the day given form through my mind, but it frightens me.

**Pull me down again**

**And guide me into pain**

Always behind the creatures of most horrid imagination lie the eyes of the one who created me. I never see anything more than his eyes, vicious orbs of carmine vehemence whose gaze pierces through me like a knife. Through the darkness and the pain and the searing rage of the fires that burn all around, I hear his voice, and it is the only sound that exists on this desolate plane far beyond the security of the conscious world.

**I'm counting nocturnal hours**

**Drowned visions in haunted sleep**

"_You exist to serve me!"_

Those words haunt me worse than anything else possibly could, and the greatest part of the fear they cause is the fact that, in some ways, he was right. Without him around, I know nothing of what I should be. Without him, I have no set path to follow in my life. I know that I should pave my own road, follow my own dreams, but what I want is so fundamentally intertwined with what he wanted me to be and what my 'cousin' desires to achieve that my own dreams are little more than an amalgamation of the two that are most connected to my birth…both of whom could be viewed as my father.

**Faint flickering of your powers**

**Leaks out to show what you keep**

It sounds so weird to say that, but the truth often sounds that way, and sometimes, I resent the fact that I learned this. Returning to the house in the Colorado foothills after Vlad had retreated from the world, self-imposed in exile, I started going through the house, trying to find out what I could about myself before the government decided to get their grubby hands all over his ghost weaponry and the experiment logs he'd created when trying to stabilize his Danny clone. Only some of what I was looking for was in Colorado, and it took a number of tries to get past the security the Guys in White had left around the house in Amity Park to gather up all the records Vlad had of us.

**Pull me down again**

**And guide me into…**

Vlad created me from ectoplasm and the diseased science he sought to use to attain a half-ghost son, and to do so in a way that would generally stabilize me, he needed Danny's DNA. As such, Danny's ghostly genetics, which is what he had gathered through Valerie's hunting, only served to give me my ghost half and stabilize the ectoplasm that created me. Human genetics, through from what source I wish I didn't know, was something that was a last-minute addition to my system, giving me not only the human half I was lacking but creating a genetic structure that wouldn't collapse as quickly as the others had. For all his genius when it came to establishing our basic structure, he was kind of an idiot when it came to actually figuring out how to create a half-ghost…seeing as we are also half-human.

The unique thing about me was that I was the first of the clones who was subjected to the genetic manipulation and splicing that would result in a fully-stabilized hybrid. I was what Vlad had referred to as a Phase Four clone, and I found, in his records, that my birth as a female was enough for me to be considered a failure in his experiments.

**There is failure inside**

**This test I can't persist**

**Kept back by the enigma**

**No criterias demanded here**

However, it was these records that turned Danny from cousin to father. A failure in the eyes of my creator, I was forged of the union of spliced genes from a human host, who remained unnamed for some time, and Danny's ghost genes. Vlad had failed in his goal by not isolating the Y chromosome, thereby giving me of a pairing of X chromosomes, rendering me female and, in his eyes, ruined. Phase Five, the primary clone that Vlad had created as Danny's, had not been tainted by this mistake, which is part of why he looked exactly like Danny's ghost form. The other half of the reason was that Vlad, seeing the error in using another host, got his hands on some of Danny's human DNA, using that to make sure that the clone was an exact copy of the hybrid he wanted as son and heir.

**Deadly patterns make my wreath**

**Prosperous in your ways**

The only reason that we abducted Danny was because Vlad needed his mid-morph DNA. At that time, I didn't understand what that meant, since the samples Vlad had were his human and ghost genes, which should have been enough. Going over the logs of the experiments, I discovered why that was such an essential part of the cloning project.

The shift from human to ghost not only changes our appearance and our primary genetic structure, but the transformation causes an ephemeral blend of the two forms, something caught perfectly between life and death for a fraction of a second. This kind of transient structure is a necessary component of the halfa nature, something created naturally through human exposure to charged ectoplasm, which explains why even I had the issue with melting down when I used too much of my power – I was a ghost fused with human genes rather than the other way around. I can only assume that the stuff Jack created that Danny used on me was charged enough to create my own stable mid-morph form.

**Pale ghost in the corner**

**Pouring a caress on your shoulder**

"_He's using you! You're nothing more than another mess he's not gonna clean up."_

"_Prime clone destabilized."_

"_Cover your ears and get behind me."_

"_I don't think so, girl. You don't dare use your powers again. And he's beaten – this is over."_

**Puzzled by shrewd innocence**

**Runs a thick tide beneath**

That day will probably haunt me until the day I…stop existing, or whatever happens to half-ghosts. I'd been living with Vlad for nearly a month by that point, and I had never seen the darker side of what he was until that day. Danny had warned me that Vlad was a manipulative fruit loop, but the look on his face after the Phase Five clone degenerated – he was willing to kill both me and Danny for what we had done.

**Ushered into inner graves**

**Nails bleeding from the struggle**

Incarnate of a new soul, I do not yet carry the weight of errors past. I have had no lives before this one, so why do I suffer for the crimes and faults that are not my own? Hounded by the darkened wraiths of suffering and internal specters of loathing, I am plagued by fear and doubt, yet I lack the reason to have such destructive emotions within me. I'm only a year and a half old as it is!

**It is the end for the weak at heart**

**Always the same**

**A lullaby for the ones who've lost all**

**Reeling inside**

What are my crimes?! What have I done to be the pariah for my creator's lust for power?! Why must I pay for that which was not done by my hand?!

I'm not the one to blame!

- - - - -

A fiery arc of pain lanced through Danny's mind, and he grabbed at his head as he tumbled to the floor, biting back the scream of agony threatening to escape his throat, Sam and Tucker were immediately at his side as he groaned and fell over on the carpeted floor of his room. Tears leaked between his clenched eyelids, dripping onto the soft flooring beneath him, his throat issued forth an unending whimper of catalytic suffering.

"Danny, what's wrong?" Sam asked, panicking as she tried to comfort her boyfriend.

Through his wracking sobs, his fingers clenched tight in his hair as if trying to keep his brain from seeping out, he managed a choked reply – "Danielle."

Wordlessly, the two friends lifted the half-ghost into their arms, heading for the basement of the Fenton household. Ever since the incident that had stabilized Danni's ghost half, there had been a weird link existing between the hybrid child and his female 'clone', though Danny was certain that Danni was something more than a clone and something other than his cousin, which was the family relation she had provided to him when they had first met a little over a year ago. He had, however, not voiced this belief to anyone other than himself.

Unceremoniously dropping Danny onto the seat in the Specter Speeder, Sam grabbed a few pieces of Fenton weaponry as Tucker started up the engines, and once the trio was strapped in, the engines were gunned and the Speeder shot out of the basement, launching from the back yard.

**My gleaming eye in your necklace**

**Reflects stare of primal regrets**

"Where, Danny?" Sam asked, and the halfa, still whining in pain from the mental assault that had taken him, pointed back over his shoulder, indicating that he was sensing Danni's ghost energy coming from somewhere in the opposite direction.

Tucker banked a hard left and moved in the direction Danny had indicated, wondering what exactly had happened to his best friend's clone that had triggered such a violent reaction, the half-ghost next to him wailing in pain, his eyes flooded with tears.

Pushing the engines to their maximum thrust, Tucker made the minute adjustments in direction as Sam coaxed their directions out of Danny, holding his head against her shoulder, running her fingers through his hair, desperately trying to soothe the monstrous headache that was plaguing him.

"…She's…in pain," Danny muttered, pointing his finger a little to the left of their current heading. "Not…physical…but …" Danny was cut off as multiple daggers of pain carved vile sigils of suffering throughout his head, and he phazed through both Sam and the seat, landing hard on the floor of the Speeder, writhing in agony.

Yanking off her seat belt, Sam jumped over the seat, trying desperately to pin Danny to the floor and keep him from flinging himself around the cabin, worried that the internal attack he was suffering might take too great a toll on his body. Smoothing back his hair from his dampened face, she nearly fell backwards in shock as his eyes snapped open, the normally calm marine blue orbs marred by jagged lines of bright green, the ectoplasm cutting chasms in his sapphire irises.

The Speeder's sensors suddenly flared to life, a small dot on the far fringes of the top of the scope blinking. "I've found her," Tucker called to the two in back.

Sam could only hold Danny tighter in response, cradling his head in her lap, softly massaging the temples that were throbbing beneath her fingertips.

Gunning the engines, Tucker looked quickly at the blinking display next to his left hand, looking at the little red blip that indicated an ectoplasmic entity in the area. Adjusting the course heading of the Speeder, the red dot quickly shifted into the middle of the screen, telling Tucker that he was now headed straight for Danielle.

Behind the black veil of closed eyes, Danny could feel the arcs of anguish course through him, and he reached out blindly into the world that he and Danni were both part of, cutting through the distance between them, trying to soothe her pain from afar. He needed her to relax if he had any hope of being able to take care of her, and part of him sought to find out, once and for all, why it was that he felt so close to her though she was little more than a manufactured pawn for Vlad's elaborate chess game.

Tucker groaned slightly as the dot that indicated where Danni was suddenly veered far to the right, and he banked accordingly, trying to keep the dot directly in front, and Sam turned her head only long enough to see that they were heading out of town and towards the woods surrounding Lake Eerie…at least for now.

Six words flitted out of Danny's mouth, cast along the immaterial, sounding like the tormented wails of the damned to the ears of his friends, and they looked at him in fear, never before having heard such a horrendous sound come from him. Those words, however, to the ears of any who live beyond the realm of life, were simple and calming – a balm for the unexplained pain – "Stop, Danni. I'm on my way."

Tucker was shocked to see the small blip of halfa stop where she'd been, and he gunned the engines, maxing out their thrust, speeding towards the youngest hybrid before she'd have a chance to take off once again.

- - - - -

The scream of engines caught Danni's attention, and she drifted out of sight, hovering into a nearby tree as the Specter Speeder came to a gentle stop near the lake, landing softly in the grass. The half-ghost watched as Tucker and Sam clambered out, the former looking intently at his PDA. The latter, however, seemed more interested in something in the Speeder than she was of whatever was on the small electronic device in the other's hands.

The object of Sam's interest stumbled out a few moments later, clutching the side of his head as he hobbled out of the Speeder, slipping out of his human form and hovering above the ground, more than likely looking for her.

After all, hadn't she just heard his voice a while before, telling her to stop? Remaining invisible, she slowly lowered herself to ground level, floating towards the trio. About ten feet away from them, she stopped, landing silently beside a tree, and she listened intently.

"Are you sure she's here?" Danny asked.

"She should be," answered Tucker. "The scanner said we were practically right on top of her when we landed. She can't be that far away…unless she took off again."

"I just wish I knew what was wrong," Sam said, wiping the sweat from Danny's forehead with a black hankie she'd had in her pants pocket. "Whatever she's going through must really be intense, the way Danny's feeling it."

Danni stopped short at that comment. Danny was tapping into her emotions? Had she been causing him pain because of her own internal struggle against the demons of her nightmares?

Stepping towards them, she shimmered back into sight, ready to turn and run if Danny made the slightest motion of attack. His only response to seeing her, however, was stumbling forward, almost as if he were drunk, and hugging her tightly.

**You turn your back and you walk away**

**Never again**

"I'm here now, Danni," he whispered, holding her tightly. "It's okay now, sweetie."

Danni pulled back, confused by the affectionate moniker he'd used. "Are you feeling okay?" she asked.

"Now that I know you're okay, I am." Turning, he looked at his friends. "Can we have a couple of moments alone, guys? I really need to talk to her."

The two shrugged, climbing back into the Speeder, Sam casting a wary glance over her shoulder, Tucker, as usual, engrossed in whatever had been his game of the day on the PDA.

"What's up, Danny?" she asked innocently.

"I should be asking the same of you. There's been something that's really been bothering you lately, and I was wondering what it was," he sighed, "and I've been starting to wonder why it is that I'm tapped so deeply into your emotions. Anytime you start feeling bad, my head starts pounding, my eyes tear up and it gets hard to see, and it feels like my brain is going to start leaking out of my ears."

"I'm not the only one going through a moment, apparently," she half-answered, looking at Danny angrily. "Seriously, Danny – sweetie?"

Danny looked at the ground for a moment, as if whatever he was saying with his choice of words was something that he just couldn't handle, and he sighed heavily. He looked at her for a moment before returning his eyes to their previous target, a blade of grass growing surrounded by dirt. "I would figure that I should…address you that way. It seems right…for who you are."

"And what _is_ that? I'm your cousin, Danny, and—"

"Stop lying to yourself," Danny said, his voice lowering, becoming vastly more commanding. "You know as well as I just _what_ you are."

**Spiraling into the ground below**

**Like autumn leaves left in the wake**

**To fade away**

Danni couldn't help the feeling of utter and abject horror rising in her, and she was about to turn and run when she saw Danny collapse forward, her pain affecting him once more.

"Stop running from what we already know," Danny said, speaking into the dirt rather than at her. "Stop trying to say you're my cousin when we both know better." Pushing himself up from the ground, he knelt before her, finally turning his emerald green eyes to hers. "You're my daughter, Danielle," he stated plainly. "I don't know how I know, but I know it's the truth. Even though I had no real part in what would normally make you that, it still doesn't change the fact that you are my _child_." The last word came out low and powerful, ringing not of hate or of disgust, but of the resounding ferocity of a parent protecting his brood, indeed a very Fenton trait.

Danni could only stare at him blankly, wondering just how he'd come to that conclusion. She'd destroyed or hidden nearly everything that had to do with the cloning project, and it would have been impossible for him to have found the papers that implicated him in the role he was saying he had regarding her.

As if reading her thoughts, Danny answered her. "There's no way that my _clone_ would be a _girl_, let alone a girl that doesn't look completely like me."

"But there are ways—"

"I don't care if there are," Danny cut her off. "In a closed-off lab environment like the one where Vlad made you, it would have taken a lot more than some badly spliced genes to mess your genetics up and make you female even though you're supposed to be male. Vlad wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but he did his best to be the shiniest one there just to fool people. It just came to me one day that you aren't a clone. A clone would look like the thing that destabilized in the lab in Colorado, not like you. Besides, you're part human, just like I am. Using ghost genes he'd gotten from me while I was Phantom wouldn't have allowed him the human genes he'd have needed for a half-ghost child. It would have given him a clone of just my ghost half." Danny stopped, seeing something behind Danni's shimmering orbs. "You knew, didn't you? You knew before I did."

She nodded slowly. "I spent so long after I found out wanting to just make the knowledge go away. I didn't want to know what I really was, who my parents are. It's not something—"

"Parents?" Danny asked incredulously. "You know who the human gene donor is?"

Danni nodded again. "After I found out, I destroyed nearly all of the paperwork Vlad had on us, from the Phase One clones all the way up to the clone we melted, his Phase Five. I wiped his computer drives, too, just to make sure that anything that he had on me was gone. It hurt too much knowing how much he treated me like I was nothing more than a mistake and a failed experiment, despite what he went through to get me in the first place."

"You destroyed everything?" Danny asked incredulously.

"Not everything," she answered, shaking her head. Pulling a single sheet of folded paper out of her back pocket, she handed the crumpled piece of printer paper to Danny.

Unfolding the paper, Danny's eyes wandered over the immense amounts of text, wondering just how Vlad dealt with reading such small font. It contained a lot of numerical coding, which was probably experiment numbers of some sort. About halfway down the page, Danny found his name and another batch of senseless jumble, which, at this point, was probably information on some of Danny's vital statistics: height, weight, and the genetic code sequences for particular physical characteristics so that Vlad could assure a successful clone. Shaking his head at how anal the old fruit loop had been about this project, Danny let his eyes fall even further down the page, seeking the part that would name the human gene donor, and he was sure that, despite already being in ghost form, his heart stopped in his chest. "You're…you're sure about this?" Danny asked, his voice breaking as his hands began to tremble.

**Waking up to your sound again**

**And lapse into the ways of misery**

Danni nodded, flipping the paper in Danny's hands, pointing out the header text on the other side: Phase Four clone, human-ghost cross-breed, genetic anomaly XX, experiment failed. Subject – "Danielle" Phantom.

Danny looked at the header before turning the page over again, his eyes scanning the name of Danni's biological mother once more, as if he could burn a hole through the information and his memory if he stared at it long enough. There, in the same crunched font as the rest of the page, were two words that Danny never expected to see, let alone in regards to anything that Vlad was involved in. Falling backwards, Danny landed hard on his rear, folding the paper up and tucking it into his own pocket. "I don't…I can't…it…Danni…what am I…how can I begin to…to tell her?"

"It could be our little secret," the young girl murmured, taken aback by the look of utter disbelief in her father's eyes.

"What do you mean 'our little secret'? I think she deserves to know what Vlad did, despite the less-than-desired consequences it could have. She's your _mother_, Danni. You can't keep running from her forever." Dropping his head into his hands, he scoffed. "Even my archenemy knew we had it bad for each other, but did he have to go so far?" He looked at Danni. "And why was the experiment marked a failure – your unstable nature?"

"The fact that I was a girl," she answered plainly, and Danny looked ready to break the nearest…something in half.

He, in fact, chose the next nearest thing, as Danni was right next to him, and vaporized a tree to his right. "What the fuck was that bastard thinking? You were the best thing he ever had, and all he could do was toss you aside like you were worthless? You were the closest he ever came to having a child of his own to love, and he was so much of a obsessed perfectionist asshole that he considered you a—" Danny's tirade was cut short as Danni collapsed, grasping her head and whimpering in pain. "Danni, what's wrong?"

"The pain…now I know how you felt," she answered, the throbbing subsiding as Danny's anger did the same.

Sam and Tucker came running, worried about Danny's sudden outburst, and the pair were at their friend's side immediately, Sam casting a worried glance over at her boyfriend's clone.

"Dude, are you okay?"

"I'll be fine once I can break Vlad's neck and watch him die," Danny answered maliciously, his eyes burning with anger.

Danni hung her head, ashamed of what the knowledge that she and Danny shared had done to him, especially now that he knew what Vlad truly thought of her. "It's my fault," she whispered, and Danny snapped his head up.

"None of what _he_ did is your fault. You're a victim, just like I am." Danny stood slowly, pulling Danni into his arms and hefting her up against his hip, sliding back into protective parental mode. "Let's get out of here."

"I can't go with—"  
"You aren't going to argue with me, Danielle," Danny said. "My friends may have a say in where they go with me, but I'm not about to take that kind of lip from my own daughter, teenager or not. You are not going to pull an attitude with me, especially now that I know for sure that you _are_ mine."

"Daughter?" Sam asked incredulously.

Danny nodded, the anger flashing dangerously in his eyes once more. "Vlad used my DNA in combination with a human donor's to create Danielle, but however he screwed up and forgot that boys need a Y chromosome, he dubbed her a failed experiment because she came out as a female rather than a perfect clone of me." Danny shook his head, clearing the building aggression before his mental link with Danni started taking its toll. "Let's get home."

The four clambered back into the Speeder, the hunk of Fenton machinery taking to the skies and heading back for the Fenton Works building.

- - - - -

Tucker had left almost as soon as they had gotten back to the Fenton house, stating the dire need for food and, despite Danny's protests that they could get a pizza, the carnivore had opted to head home.

Danny, in the end, figured that it wasn't so much food that Tucker needed as it was a chance to mull over the information that his best friend had become a father because of Vlad's experiments. Sitting back against his bed, he watched as his girlfriend paced back and forth, his daughter sitting by the window, her eyes cast to the sky.

"How are you planning on explaining this to your parents?" Sam asked. "Aren't they going to wonder how all this happened?"

"After the Disasteroid, Mom and Dad kind of put the puzzle pieces together when it came to Vlad, so I doubt this would really surprise them in that respect. The fact that she's my daughter, or the fact that I indirectly fathered a child in the first place – that might be what throws them." Danny looked at the young girl at the window. "You know, Sam, Danielle and I aren't the only ones who are going to have to deal with this. For the rest of our lives, we have to suffer knowing what Vlad did to us, but there's a third that makes this whole sick equation complete."

"Her mother," she stated plainly. "Do either of you even know if Vlad had records of the human gene donor?"

Danny nodded solemnly. "Both of us know." Bowing his head, it took all the self-determination Danny had in him to keep from telling a lie. "Sam, she's…Danni's…" He swallowed, the truth of their current situation gagging him. Casting a glance at the ring Sam still wore on her hand, Danny shunned aside his fears of losing Sam because of this, and looked her in the eye. "Sam, Danni's _our_ daughter." Pulling the folded piece of paper out of his pocket, he opened it and handed it to her. "I don't know how that sicko got a sample of your DNA, but he used it to create her human half to counter the fact that he only had my ghost genetics at the time."

Sam's eyes cast over the paper, wandering over the coded information until she found her name next to the header for the human gene donor. Dropping into the chair by Danny's desk, her eyes flickered between the paper and her boyfriend, the disbelief in her eyes quickly turning to desperation.

Danny bit back tears as he fought to get the next few words past his lips. "I…completely understand if you…want to end our relationship because of this. The last thing that either of us…that _you_ need now is…to shoulder the burden of having…of having…" Danny couldn't even finish his sentence, unable to bear the agony of letting Sam go. Two years he'd spent fighting against everyone telling him that he and Sam were a couple, that they were dating, and here he was, ready to end it all over the twisted machinations of a half-ghost that was not only ostracized by all of society for the selfish actions he'd taken, but also condemned to self-imposed exile in outer space, no longer an actual part of their lives but still able to screw with them nonetheless.

Sam looked at the paper one last time before setting it down on the desk. "Danny," she started, not even sure where to begin. "I…I can't do this, Danny." She turned her head downwards, toward her hands resting in her lap, so she never saw the look of complete loss flash through his eyes. "I know that Vlad did a lot to all of us, and I know that despite my usual forgiving nature, I can't let what he did become something that's viewed as being in the past…especially with all he did, trying to break you and make you become his puppet…but I can't run from this. If word got out that we had a child, it would be just another stage of people saying things about us that, in their own way, aren't true, but the fact of the matter is we _do_ have a child. True, neither of us are responsible for the fact that we have…a daughter," Sam stumbled over the word slightly, still strange on her own lips, "but that doesn't mean I can be irresponsible and turn my back on her…or you, for that matter."

"But that's just it," Danni cut in. "You are my parents, but in the same respect, you're nothing more than the victims of the man who created me. You aren't responsible for me, and—"

"Don't start with that again, Danielle," Danny ordered. "Growth acceleration, laboratory recombined genetics, test-tube-controlled development of ghost powers – all of that is something that we could have never thought possible, and none of it was expected, but what came of it is something we have to care for, someone you already know that I care _about_. And don't put it past…" Danny sucked in a breath, mentally climbing over yet another wall. "Don't put it past your mother to be the same way I am. We may only be seventeen, but we've already taken a lot more onto our respective plates than most kids our age, me a little more so than her, being a hybrid." Danny looked at Sam, receiving a look of affirmation and a subtle nod. "Whether you like it or not…heck, whether you _accept it_ or not, you're still a Fenton through me and a Manson through her, and one thing neither one of us were raised to do was shirk the responsibilities we have to carry, despite how much we sometimes try to do just that."

Sam, finally feeling the full weight of everything she'd recently learned, walked over to Danielle and took the young girl into her arms, holding her tightly. "No matter what happens, no matter how this whole thing turns out…" she whispered, looking at Danny, a memory flickering through her mind from a few months before. "No matter what happens, this whole ride we've been on already and the ride I know we have ahead of us, I wouldn't change any of it."

Danny nodded, joining the two in a hug, feeling a weird sense of security in acknowledging that this was his _family_ he was hugging.


End file.
